Young surfer's close call with a shark is a 'good story for show-and-tell'

By Jessica Rapana| 2 years ago

The 10-year-old boy who surfed over a great white shark is already back in the water and his dad says it's a good story for the first day of school.

It doesn't get more Aussie than that.

Eden Hasson made headlines this week after his dad photographed him riding over the 2.5-metre shark in Nelson Bay. The young surfer didn't realise what had happened until his dad zoomed in on the now-infamous photo, thinking the dark shape was seaweed.

Talking to TODAY this morning, the brave little grommit said he was "shocked" but "wasn't too scared" after he realised what had happened, getting back in the surf the next day.

"If I was on the wave and I saw it I probably would've freaked out and fell off. I was lucky I didn't fall off," he said.

Eden's dad Chris said his son had been in the "right place, right time" to get the "one in a million shot".

"Or, wrong place, wrong time, whichever way you see it," he told TODAY hosts Tim Gilbert and Lisa Wilkinson this morning.

He said the surf-crazy family had been out on the waves all day and he had encouraged Eden to get "one more wave".

"He's taken off on the wave and just before he took off I thought I saw a dark shape but I just kept taking the photos. He finished on the beach, it was a beautiful wave. Curiosity got me looking at the first shot, I couldn't see anything. At the second shot, I zoomed in and I realised what I'd captured."

"I quickly pulled him in and called 'shark' to the other four boys out there and we had a look on the beach - obviously everyone's high-fiving and going 'wow', you know, 'what a photo'."

Chris said experts who had seen the image thought the shark looked "startled more than anything".

"It's hard to know with the image but yeah, of course, as a concerned dad you look at the image to start with and you're a bit worried but, you know, afterwards, it ended well and it's a good story for him to tell on the first day of school at show-and-tell."